


Super Divergents

by CastielsGrace666



Category: Divergent Series - Veronica Roth, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Divergent Fusion, Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Castiel is Four Dean is Tris, Good Parent John Winchester, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-16 01:53:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29568486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CastielsGrace666/pseuds/CastielsGrace666
Summary: Plot of Divergent with supernatural characters.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	1. Chapter 1

If you were to look inside the Winchester house, you would find that there is only one mirror. It can be found behind a sliding panel in the upstairs hallway. Their faction only allows each of them to stand in front of it on the second day of every third month, the day Mary Winchester cuts her husband's, and two sons' hair. Then she stands in front of it long enough for her son Dean to cut hers.

It is on this day that Dean sits on the stool and his mother stands behind him with the scissors. He watches as the strands fall on the floor in a dull, dirty blond ring.

When she finishes, she pulls Dean's hair away from his face and wets it until it's flat and shiny. Dean finds himself noticing how calm she looks and how focused she is. He knows she is well-practiced in the art of losing herself. The same can’t be said of Dean himself. 

He sneaks a look at his reflection when she isn’t paying attention—not for the sake of vanity, but out of curiosity. A lot can happen to a person’s appearance in three months. In his reflection, he can see a narrow face, wide, round eyes, and a long, thin nose—In his opinion, he still looks a little too feminine, though sometime in the last few months he had turned sixteen. The other factions celebrate birthdays, but theirs doesn't. It would be self-indulgent. 

“There,” Mary says, making Dean pay attention to her again as she finishes grooming his hair. He thought he had gotten away with it until her eyes manage to catch his in the mirror. It's too late to look away, so Dean prepared himself for another lecture, but instead of scolding him, Mary smiles at their shared reflection. Dean feels relief, knowing his mother usually understood him better than others would. Especially his father. He frowns a little thinking of how different his parents are. Why doesn’t she reprimand Dean for staring at himself? He knows his father would have at least lectured him about selfish behavior and how he was raised better than that. He snaps out of his thoughts as his mother smiles at him and gives him a one armed hug.

“So today is the day,” she says.

“Yes,” Dean finds himself replying.

“Are you nervous?”

Dean stays silent as he stares into his own eyes for a moment. Today is the day of the aptitude test that will show him which of the five factions he belongs in. And tomorrow, at the Choosing Ceremony, he will get to decide on a faction; he will decide the rest of his life; he will have to decide whether he will stay with his family or abandon them.

“No,” Dean finally says to his mom. “The tests don’t have to change our choices.”

“Right.” She smiles letting go of him. “Let’s go eat breakfast.”

“Thank you. For cutting my hair.”

She kisses Dean's cheek and slides the panel over the mirror and winks at him. Dean smiles as he thinks about how his mother could be beautiful, in a different world. Her body is thin beneath the gray robe. She has high cheekbones and long eyelashes, and when she lets her hair down at night, it hangs in waves over her shoulders. But she must hide that beauty in Abnegation.

They walk together to the kitchen, neither talking about the mirror incident. On these mornings when Dean's brother makes breakfast, and his father’s hand skims his hair as he reads the newspaper, while his mother hums as she clears the table—it is on these mornings that Dean feels guiltiest for wanting to leave them.

After finishing breakfast, Dean rushes out to catch the bus, trying to get a handle on his thoughts. As he gets on he focuses on how the bus stinks of exhaust. Every time it hits a patch of uneven pavement, it jostles him from side to side, even though he's gripping the seat to keep himself still.

Dean's younger brother, Sam, stands in the aisle, holding a railing above his head to keep himself steady. They don’t look alike. Where Dean has their mother's light hair, green eyes, full lips and smooth skin Sam has their father’s dark hair and hooked nose and a mix of their mother’s green eyes and their fathers brown creating a nice hazel color, he also had dimpled cheeks that were most likely from their mother. When Sam was younger, that collection of features looked strange, but now it suits him. If he wasn’t Abnegation, Dean is sure the girls at school would stare at him. Dean is different though he looks too feminine for girls to really stare at, not that Dean would be interested anyway. 

Dean notices that Sam also inherited their mother’s talent for selflessness. He gave his seat to a surly Candor man on the bus without a second thought.

The Candor man wears a black suit with a white tie—Candor standard uniform. Their faction values honesty and sees the truth as black and white, so that is what they wear.

The gaps between the buildings narrow and the roads are smoother as the bus nears the heart of the city. The building that was once called the Sears Tower—but now people call it the Hub—emerges from the fog, a black pillar in the skyline. The bus passes under the elevated tracks. Dean has never been on a train, though they never stop running and there are tracks everywhere. Only the Dauntless ride them.

Five years ago, volunteer construction workers from Abnegation repaved some of the roads. They started in the middle of the city and worked their way outward until they ran out of materials. The roads where Dean and his family live are still cracked and patchy, making it unsafe to drive on. Not that Dean's family has a car anyway.

Sam’s expression is placid as the bus sways and jolts on the road. The gray robe falls from his arm as he clutches a pole for balance. Dean can tell by the constant shift of his eyes that he is watching the people around them—striving to see only them and to forget himself. Candor values honesty, but our faction, Abnegation, values selflessness.

The bus stops in front of the school and Dean gets up, scooting past the Candor man. As he grabs Sam’s arm Dean stumbles over the man’s shoes earning an annoyed look for his trouble. Dean's slacks are too long, and he's never been that graceful to begin with.

Out of the three schools, the building for the upperclassmen is the oldest. Like all the other buildings around it, the school is made of glass and steel. A large metal sculpture in front of it is used by the Dauntless to climb after school, daring each other to go higher and higher. Dean remembers how last year he had watched one of them fall and break her leg. He was the one who ran to get the nurse.

“Aptitude tests today,” Dean informs Sam. Even though Sam is not quite a year younger than he is they're still in the same year at school.

Sam nods as they pass through the front doors. Dean can feel his muscles tighten the second they walk in. The atmosphere feels hungry, like every sixteen-year-old is trying to devour as much of this last day as possible. Dean knows that it's likely that none of them, including himself will walk these halls again after the Choosing Ceremony—their new factions will be responsible for finishing their education.

All classes are cut in half so everyone can attend all of them before the aptitude tests, which take place after lunch. Dean can feel his heart rate go up at the thought of it. 

“You aren’t at all worried about what they’ll tell you?” Dean finds himself asking Sam incredulously as they pause at the split in the hallway where Sam will go one way, toward Advanced Math, and Dean will go the other, toward Faction History.

Sam raises an eyebrow with amusement . “Are you?”

Dean knows he could tell him he's been worried for weeks about where the aptitude test will place him—Abnegation, Candor, Erudite, Amity, or Dauntless. But instead he smiles and says, “Not really.”

Sam smiles back. “Well…have a good day.”

As Dean walks toward Faction History, he's chewing on his lower lip as he realises Sam never answered the question. 

Even though the hallways feel cramped, the light coming through the windows creates an illusion of space. Although Dean knows there's not since the school is one of the only places where all the factions mix. Even knowing that though the crowd has a new kind of energy, most likely a last day mania.

As he struggles through the hall a girl with long curly hair shouts “Hey!” next to his ear, waving at what Dean can only guess is a distant friend. Struggling more, he gets a jacket sleeve to the cheek. Then an Erudite boy in a blue sweater shoves past making Dean lose his balance and fall hard onto the ground.

“Out of my way, Stiff,” the boy snaps, and continues down the hallway.

Dean can feel his cheeks warm from embarrassment as he gets up and dusts himself off. A few people had stopped when he fell, but none of them offered to help him. He can feel their eyes follow him to the edge of the hallway. This sort of thing has been happening to others in his faction for months now—the Erudite have been releasing antagonistic reports about Abnegation, and it has begun to affect the way they relate at school. The gray clothes, the plain hairstyle, and the unassuming demeanor of Dean's faction are supposed to make it easier to forget himself, and easier for everyone else to forget him too. But now all they really do is make him a target.

Dean pauses by a window in the E Wing and waits for the Dauntless to arrive. He does this every morning at exactly 7:25, watching as the Dauntless prove their bravery by jumping from a moving train.

Dean's father calls the Dauntless “hellions.” They are pierced, tattooed, and black-clothed. Their primary purpose is to guard the fence that surrounds the city. From what, Dean doesn't know. And by now he knows not to ask his parents.

He knows that he should be perplexed, should wonder what courage—which is the virtue they most value—has to do with a metal ring through your nostril. Instead his eyes cling to them wherever they go.

The train whistle blares, somehow resonating in Dean's chest. He can see as the light fixed to the front of the train clicks on and off. He almost wants to smile as the train hurtles past the school, squealing on iron rails. As the last few cars pass, a mass exodus of young men and women in dark clothing hurl themselves from the moving cars, some dropping and rolling, others stumbling a few steps before regaining their balance. One of the boys wraps his arm around a girl’s shoulders, laughing.

Dean knows watching them is a foolish practice, but something about them fascinates him. He forces himself to turn away from the window and slip through the crowd to the Faction History classroom.


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

After lunch Dean sits at one of the long tables in the cafeteria as the tests begin. The administrators call ten names at a time, one for each testing room. Dean sits next to Sam and across from their neighbor Susan.

Susan’s father travels throughout the city for his job, so he has a car and drives her to and from school every day. He offered to drive them, too, but as Sam says, they prefer to leave later and would not want to inconvenience him.

Of course not. Dean thinks, rolling his eyes.

The test administrators are mostly Abnegation volunteers. But due to the fact that people can't be tested by someone from their own faction there is also an Erudite in one of the testing rooms and a Dauntless in another to test those from Abnegation. The rules also say that no one can prepare for the test in any way, so Dean has no idea what to expect.

His gaze drifts from Susan to the Dauntless tables across the room. They are laughing and shouting and playing cards. At another set of tables, the Erudite chatter over books and newspapers, in constant pursuit of knowledge.

A group of Amity girls in yellow and red sit in a circle on the cafeteria floor, playing some kind of hand-slapping game involving a rhyming song. Every few minutes Dean can hear a chorus of laughter from them as someone is eliminated and made to sit in the center of the circle. At the table next to them, Candor boys make wide gestures with their hands. They appear to be arguing about something, but it must not be serious, because some of them are still smiling.

Then there's the Abnegation table, who have to sit quietly and wait. Faction customs dictate even idle behavior and supersede individual preference. Dean doubts all the Erudite want to study all the time, or that every Candor enjoys a lively debate, but they can’t defy the norms of their factions any more than Dean himself can.

Sam’s name is called in the next group. He moves confidently toward the exit. Dean knows he doesn't need to wish Sam luck or assure him that he shouldn’t be nervous. He knows where he belongs, and as far as Dean knows, he always has. The earliest memory of Sam is from when Dean was four years old. Sam had scolded Dean for not giving his jump rope to a little girl on the playground who didn’t have anything to play with. He doesn’t lecture Dean often anymore, but his look of disapproval still sits in Dean's mind.

Even after attempting to explain to him that their instincts are not the same—it hadn't even occurred to Dean to go over to the little girl because he had seen a boy a little older than him getting picked on by an Erudite and he'd wanted to help him. —but Sam doesn’t understand. “Just do what you’re supposed to,” he always says. It is that easy for him. It should be that easy for Dean but it's not. 

His stomach wrenches as Dean closes his eyes. He keeps them closed until ten minutes later, when Sam sits down again.

Dean immedetly notices that Sam is plaster-pale, and keeps pushing his palms along his legs like Dean does when he wipes off sweat. When he brings them back, his fingers shake. Dean open his mouth to ask if he's ok. He would ask what happened but he's not allowed to ask Sam about his results, and Sam is not allowed to tell him either.

Before he can ask anything though an Abnegation volunteer speaks the next round of names. Two from Dauntless, two from Erudite, two from Amity, two from Candor, and then: “From Abnegation: Susan Black and Dean Winchester.”

Dean forces himself to get up and go back because he's supposed to, but if it were up to him, he would stay in the seat for the rest of time. It feels like there is a bubble in his chest that expands more by the second, threatening to break Dean apart from the inside. He follows Susan to the exit, knowing that the people they pass probably can’t tell them apart. They wear the same clothes and both have blond hair.The only difference is that Susan might not feel like she’s going to throw up, and from what Dean can tell, her hands aren’t shaking so hard she has to clutch the hem of her shirt to steady them.

Waiting outside the cafeteria is a row of ten rooms. They only ever get used for the aptitude tests, so Dean has never been in one before. Unlike the other rooms in the school, they are separated, not by glass, but by mirrors. DeN looks at himself, pale and terrified, walking toward one of the doors. Susan grins nervously at him as she walks into room 5, and he walks into room 6, where a Dauntless woman waits.

She is not as severe-looking as the young Dauntless Dean has seen around. She has small, dark, angular eyes and wears a black blazer—like a man’s suit—and jeans. It is only when she turns to close the door that he sees a tattoo on the back of her neck, a black-and-white hawk with a red eye. If he didn’t feel like his heart had migrated to his throat, Dean would ask her what it signifies. It must signify something.

Mirrors cover the inner walls of the room showing his reflection from all angles: the gray fabric obscuring the shape of his back, the long neck, clenched hands, and face slowly going red with a blood blush. The ceiling glows white from the light. In the center of the room is a reclined chair, like a dentist’s, with a machine next to it. It looks like a place where terrible things happen.

“Don’t worry,” the woman says, “it doesn’t hurt.”

Her hair is black and straight, but in the light Dean sees that it is streaked with gray.

“Have a seat and get comfortable,” she says. “My name is Billie.”

Clumsily Dean sits in the chair and reclines, putting his head on the headrest. The lights hurt his eyes. Billie busies herself with the machine on the right as Dean tries to focus on her and not on the wires in he sees in her hands.

“Why the hawk?” Dean blurts out as she attaches an electrode to his forehead.

“Never met a curious Abnegation before,” she says, raising her eyebrows at Dean.

Shivering, Dean feels goose bumps on his arms. His curiosity is a mistake, a betrayal of Abnegation values. His father always told him he needed to stop being so curious, but he couldn't help it.

Humming a little, she presses another electrode to his forehead and explains, “In some parts of the ancient world, the hawk symbolized the sun. Back when I got this, I figured if I always had the sun on me, I wouldn’t be afraid of the dark.”

No matter how he tries to keep it back Dean can't stop himself from asking another question. “You’re afraid of the dark?” 

  
  


“I was afraid of the dark,” she corrects Dean giving him a look as she presses the next electrode to her own forehead attaching a wire to it. She shrugs. “Now it reminds me of the fear I’ve overcome.”

She stands behind him making Dean squeeze the armrests so tightly his knuckles turn white. She tugs wires toward her, attaching them to Dean, to her, and to the machine behind her. Then she passes him a vial of clear liquid.

“Drink this,” she says.

“What is it?” Dean asks even though his throat feels swollen. He swallows hard a d tries again. “What’s going to happen?”

“Can’t tell you that. Just trust me.” 

Dean let's out a huge exhale, trying to relax and tips the contents of the vial into his mouth, closing his eyes tight as he does. .

When they open, an instant has passed, but he finds himself somewhere else. He's standing in the school cafeteria again, but all the long tables are empty. He's able to see through the glass walls and notices that it’s snowing. On the table in front of him are two baskets. In one is a hunk of cheese, and in the other, a knife the length of his forearm.

From behind him he hears , a woman’s voice says, “Choose.”

“Why?” Dean asks not trusting the voice.

“Choose,” she repeats.

Dean looks over his shoulder, but no one is there. Turning back to the baskets he asks . “What will I do with them?”

“Choose!” she yells.

When she screams at him, Dean feels his fear disappear and stubbornness replaces it. Instead he scowls and crosses his arms in defiance.

“Have it your way,” she says.

The baskets disappear as Dean hears a door squeak. Turning to see who it is he sees not a “who” but a “what”: A dog with a pointed nose stands a few yards away from him. It crouches low and creeps forward, its lips peeling back from its white teeth. A growl gurgles from deep in its throat, and Dean can see why the cheese would have come in handy. Or the knife. But it’s too late now.

Dean thinks about running, but the dog would be faster than he could run. He could try to wrestle it to the ground, but he doesn't have much muscle since they don't have weights in Abnegation. He can feel his head pound and knows he has to make a decision. Maybe he can jump over one of the tables and use it as a shield—no, he's definitely not strong enough to tip one over.

  
  


The dog snarls, and Dean can almost feel the sound vibrating in his skull.

Dean remembers his biology textbook said that dogs can smell fear because of a chemical secreted by human glands in a state of duress, the same chemical a dog’s prey secretes. Smelling fear leads them to attack. The dog inches toward him, its nails scraping the floor.

Dean can’t run. He can’t fight. Instead he breathes in the smell of the dog’s foul breath and tries not to think about what it just ate. There are no whites in its eyes, just a black gleam.

  
  


Dean thinks about what else he knows about dogs. He knows he shouldn’t look it in the eye. That’s a sign of aggression. He remembers Sam asking their father for a pet dog when he was young, and now, staring at the ground in front of the dog’s paws, Dean has no idea why. It comes closer, still growling. If staring into its eyes is a sign of aggression, what’s a sign of submission?

His breaths are loud but steady. He sinks to his knees. The last thing he wants to do is lie down on the ground in front of the dog—making its teeth level with his face—but it’s the best option available. So he stretches his legs out behind him and leans onto his elbows. The dog creeps closer, and closer, until Dean can feel its warm breath on his face. He can feel his arms are shaking, though he doesn't know if it's from dear or adrenaline. 

  
  


The dog barks in his ear, making Dean clench his teeth to keep from screaming.

Something rough and wet touches his cheek as the dog’s growling stops. Lifting his head to look at it again, Dean can see the dog panting and realises that itt licked his face. Frowning but still being cautious, Dean moves to sit on his heels. The dog props its paws up on his knees and licks his chin this time making Dean cringe a little. He wipes the drool from his skin with a laugh.

“You’re not such a vicious beast, huh?”

Dean gets up slowly making sure not to startle it, but it seems like a different animal than the one that faced him a few seconds ago. So he stretches out his hand, staying ready to draw it back needed. All the dog does though is nudge the offered hand with its head. Dean can't help but be glad that he didn’t pick up the knife.

He blinks, and when he reopens his eyes, a child is standing across the room wearing a white suit. He stretches out both hands and squeals, “Puppy!”

As he runs toward the dog at his side, Dean opens his mouth to warn him, but he can't get it out fast enough. The dog turns but instead of growling, it barks and snarls and snaps, and its muscles bunch up like coiled wire. About to pounce. I Dean doesnt think, he just jumps; hurling his body on top of the dog, wrapping his arms around its thick neck.

  
  


Dean feels his head hit the ground. The dog is gone, and so is the little boy. Instead he is alone—in the testing room, now empty. He turns in a slow circle and can’t see himself in any of the mirrors. So he pushes the door open and walks into the hallway, but it isn’t a hallway; it’s a bus, and all the seats are taken.

Dean stands in the aisle and holds on to a pole. Sitting near him is a man with a newspaper. Dean can’t see his face over the top of the paper, but he can see his hands. They are scarred, like he was burned, and they clench around the paper like he wants to crumple it.

“Do you know this guy?” he asks. He taps the picture on the front page of the newspaper. The headline reads: “Brutal Murderer Finally Apprehended!” Dean stares at the word “murderer.” It has been a long time since he last read that word, but even its shape fills him with dread.

In the picture beneath the headline is a young man with a plain face and a beard. Dean can't help but feel like he does know him, though he doesn't remember how. And at the same time, he feels like it would be a bad idea to tell the man that.

“Well?” Dean can hear anger in his voice as he asks again. “Do you?”

A bad idea—no, a very bad idea. Dean's heart pounds and he clutches the pole to keep his hands from shaking, from giving anything away. If he tells him he knows the man from the article, something awful will happen to him. But maybe Dean can convince him that he doesn'’t. He could clear his throat and shrug his shoulders—but that would be a lie.

Dean clears his throat.

“Do you?” the man repeats.

Dean shrugs his shoulders.

“Well?”

A shudder goes through Dean . His fear is irrational; this is just a test, it isn’t real. “Nope,” Dean says, keeping his voice casual. “No idea who he is.”

He stands, and finally Dean can see his face. He wears dark sunglasses and his mouth is bent into a snarl. His cheek is rippled with scars, like his hands. He leans close to Dean's face, breath smelling like cigarettes. Dean has to forcefully remind himself that this isn't real.

“You’re lying,” he says. “You’re lying!”

“I am not.”

“I can see it in your eyes.”

Dean stands up straighter. “You can’t.”

“If you know him,” he says in a low voice, “you could save me. You could save me!”

Dean narrows his eyes. “Well,” he says, setting his jaw. “I don’t.” 

As soon as the words leave Dean's mouth everything fades away.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've decided that Dean is only going to be 5'8'' in this story since he's only 16. Castiel when he's introduced will be 6'' tall.

Dean jolts awake with the feeling of sweaty palms and a pang of guilt in his chest. He is lying in the chair in the mirrored room. When he tilts his head back, he can see Billie behind him. She has her lips pinched together as she removes the electrodes from both of their heads. Dean waits for her to say something about the test—that it’s over, or that he did well, although how could he do poorly on a test like this?—but she says nothing, just pulls the wires from his forehead.

Dean sits forward and wipes his palms off on his slacks. Great, he had to have done something wrong, even if it only happened in his mind. That's probably why Billie has a strange look on her face. She's probably thinking of a way to tell me what a terrible person Dean is? If only she would just come out with it.

  
  


“That,” she says, “was perplexing. Excuse me, I’ll be right back.”

Perplexing?

Dean brings his knees to his chest and buries his face in them. He wishes he could cry because the tears might bring a sense of release, but he can't even make himself cry right now. How can you fail a test you aren’t allowed to prepare for?

As the moments pass, Dean can feel himself getting more nervous. He has pto wipe off his hands every few seconds as the sweat collects—or maybe he's only doing it because it helps him feel calmer. What if they tell him that he'snot cut out for any faction? Then he would have to live on the streets, with the factionless. He can’t do that. To live factionless is not just to live in poverty and discomfort; it is to live divorced from society, separated from the most important thing in life: community.

His mother told him once that people can’t survive alone, but even if they could, they wouldn’t want to. Without a faction, a person has no purpose and no reason to live.

Dean shakes his head. He can’t think like that, he has to stay calm.

Finally the door opens, and Billie walks back in. Dean grips the arms of the chair.

“Sorry to worry you,” Billie says. She stands by Dean's feet with her hands in her pockets. She looks tense and pale.

“Dean, your results were inconclusive,” she says. “Typically, each stage of the simulation eliminates one or more of the factions, but in your case, only two have been ruled out.”

  
  


Dean can only stare at her. “Two?” Dean asks his throat feeling so tight that it’s hard to talk.

“If you had shown an automatic distaste for the knife and selected the cheese, the simulation would have led you to a different scenario that confirmed your aptitude for Amity. That didn’t happen, which is why Amity is out.” Billie explains as she scratches the back of her neck. “Normally, the simulation progresses in a linear fashion, isolating one faction by ruling out the rest. The choices you made didn’t even allow Candor, the next possibility, to be ruled out, so I had to alter the simulation to put you on the bus. And there your insistence upon dishonesty ruled out Candor.” She half smiles. “Don’t worry about that. Only the Candor ever tell the truth in that one.”

One of the knots in Dean's chest loosens. Maybe he's not an awful person after all. 

“I suppose that’s not entirely true. People who tell the truth are the Candor…and the Abnegation,” she says. “Which gives us a problem.”

Dean feels his mouth fall open in shock. 

“On the one hand, you threw yourself on the dog rather than let it attack the little girl, which is an Abnegation-oriented response…but on the other, when the man told you that the truth would save him, you still refused to tell it. Not an Abnegation-oriented response.” She sighs. “Not running from the dog suggests Dauntless, but so does taking the knife, which you didn’t do.”

She clears her throat and continues. “Your intelligent response to the dog indicates strong alignment with the Erudite. I have no idea what to make of your indecision in stage one, but—”

  
  


“Wait,” Dean holds his hands up to interrupt her. “So you have no idea what my aptitude is?”

“Yes and no. My conclusion,” she explains, “is that you display equal aptitude for Abnegation, Dauntless, and Erudite. People who get this kind of result are…” She looks over her shoulder like she expects someone to appear behind her. “…are called…Divergent.” She says the last word so quietly that Dean almost doesn't hear it, and her tense, worried look returns. She walks around the side of the chair and leans in close to me.

“Dean,” she says, “under no circumstances should you share that information with anyone. This is very important.”

“We aren’t supposed to share our results.” Dean agrees with a nod. “I know that.”

“No.” Billie says as she kneels next to the chair now and places her arms on the armrest. Their faces are only inches apart. “This is different. I don’t mean you shouldn’t share them now; I mean you should never share them with anyone, ever, no matter what happens. Divergence is extremely dangerous. You understand?”

Dean doesn't understand—how could inconclusive test results be dangerous?—but he still nods. After all he doesn't want to share his test results with anyone anyway.

“Okay.” Dean says as he peels his hands from the arms of the chair and stands feeling unsteady.

“I suggest,” Billie says, “that you go home. You have a lot of thinking to do, and waiting with the others may not benefit you.”

“I have to tell my brother where I’m going.”

“I’ll let him know.”

Dean touches his forehead and stares at the floor as he walks out of the room. He can’t bear to look her in the eye, and he can’t bear to think about the Choosing Ceremony tomorrow either.

It’s Dean's choice now, no matter what the test says.

Abnegation. Dauntless. Erudite.

Divergent.

Dean decides not to take the bus. If he gets home early, his father will notice when he checks the house log at the end of the day, and Dean will have to explain what happened. Instead he walks. He's going to have to intercept Sam before he mentions anything to their parents, but Sam at least can keep a secret.

As Dean walks to the middle of the road he notices that the buses tend to hug the curb, so he decides it's safer to stay near the middle. Sometimes, on the streets near hia house, he can see places where the yellow lines used to be. There's no use for them now that there are so few cars. Just like there's no need for stoplights, either, but in some places they dangle precariously over the road like they might crash down any minute.

Renovation moves slowly through the city, which is a patchwork of new, clean buildings and old, crumbling ones. Most of the new buildings are next to the marsh, which used to be a lake a long time ago. The Abnegation volunteer agency that Dean's mother works for is responsible for most of those renovations.

When he looks at the Abnegation lifestyle as an outsider, he can't help but think it’s beautiful. When he watches his family move in harmony; when they go to dinner parties and everyone cleans together afterward without having to be asked; when Dean sees Sam help strangers carry their groceries, he can't help but fall in love with this life all over again. It’s only when he tries to live it himself that he seems to have trouble. It never feels genuine.

But choosing a different faction means that he forsakes his family. Permanently.

Just past the Abnegation sector of the city is the stretch of building skeletons and broken sidewalks that Dean is now walking through. There are places where the road has completely collapsed, revealing sewer systems and empty subways that Dean makes sure to be careful to avoid, and places that stink so powerfully of sewage and trash that he has to plug his nose.

This is where the factionless live. Because they failed to complete initiation into whatever faction they chose, they live in poverty, doing the work no one else wants to do. They are janitors and construction workers and garbage collectors; they make fabric and operate trains and drive buses. In return for their work they get food and clothing, but, as Dean's mother says, not enough of either.

  
  


Dean can see a factionless man standing on the corner up ahead. He's wearing ragged brown clothing and his skin sags from his jaw. Dean can feel it as the man stares at him, so he stares back at him, unable to look away.

“Excuse me,” the man says in a raspy voice. “Do you have something I can eat?”

Dean can feel a lump in his throat. A stern voice in his head is telling him to Duck hishead and keep walking.

No. Dean thinks as he shakes his head. He shouldn't be afraid of this man. He needs help and Dean is one of the people who are supposed to help him.

  
  


“Um…yes,” Dean says as he reaches into his bag. His father always tells him to keep food in his bag at all times for exactly this reason. Dean offers the man a small bag of dried apple slices.

He reaches for them, but instead of taking the bag, his hand closes around Dean's wrist. The man smiles at him. Showing that he has a gap between his front teeth.

“My, don’t you have a pretty mouth and eyes,” he says. “It’s a shame the rest of you is so plain.”

Dean can feel his heart pounding as he tugs his hand back, but the man just tightens his grip. He's so close Dean can smell something acrid and unpleasant on his breath.

  
  


“You look a little young to be walking around by yourself, boy,” he says.

Dean stops his tugging, and stands up straighter. I know I look young; I don’t need to be reminded. “I’m older than I look,” Dean retorts “I’m sixteen.”

The man's lips spread wide, revealing a gray molar with a dark pit in the side. Dean can’t tell if he’s smiling or grimacing. “Then isn’t today a special day for you? The day before you choose?”

  
  


“Let go of me,” Dean says. He can hear ringing in his ears. But his voice sounds clear and stern—not at all what he had expected to hear. He feels like it doesn’t belong to him.

He's ready. He knows what to do. He can picture himself bringing his elbow back and hitting him. Dean can see the bag of apples flying away from him. And he hears his running footsteps. He's prepared to act.

But then the man releases his wrist, takes the apples, and says, “Choose wisely, little boy.”


End file.
